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This Poems Story

I wrote this poem while sitting on the porch of my childhood home in Middlesex, NJ. There was a storm brewing that night, and it was the last night I would spend in America for a while. I had just accepted a teaching position at a failing school in the United Kingdom. I emptied my head and just started writing about what I saw around me and how I was feeling. It was the start of a new adventure for me. I hope this poem speaks to people and they share it with others.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”